The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch

Tonight: Go See "Shattered" at the Loft and Learn About the Heartache Detention and Deportation Cause Separating Families

Sure, you could watch Jaime Gonzalez's Shattered on YouTube, but today is International Day of Families, so the Border Action Network and the Loft are showing the film at 7 p.m.

Presented by the Latino Policy Coalition, the film is about a young mother who is apprehended by ICE and taken into detention. The father is dead, and the children are separated from their mother. Something similar has happened to more than 46,000 families as part of ICE detentions and deportations in the first six months of 2011 alone, according to BAN.

Admission for the screening is $7 for the general public and $6 for Loft members. A panel discussion and Q&A will follow the firm with director Gonzales, as well as Jim Gonzales, Latino Policy Coalition chair; BAN and Humane Borders executive director Juanita Molina; Laurie Melrood, community educator on families separated by ICE detention and deportation; immigration attorney Mo Goldman and DACA student Josue Saldivar.

From BAN:

During these sweeps many parents were unable to claim or make arrangements for their children to be returned to them, or to be cared for by close family members. Numerous children are permanently being separated from their parents’ love, by federally-funded county agencies that have inadequate or non-existent practices and policies, to address the distinctive circumstances that undocumented immigrant parents in detention or deportation proceedings face.

Currently, there is no national reunification registry of these children, and their current location, to assist these parents seeking to reunite with their children.

We hope this special screening will help shed light on the importance of family reunification and bring it into the Comprehensive Immigration Reform debate.